Abelardo Morell, came out from Boston to demonstrate his portable camera obscura in a tent, which he will later set up inside the brick barracks during the International Orange exhibition that will take over Fort Point National Historic Site as part of the 75th anniversary celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge. This demonstration took place in San Francisco, California on Friday, April 13, 2012.

Photo: Jill Schneider

Abelardo Morell, came out from Boston to demonstrate his portable...

Image 2 of 2

Abelardo Morell, shows what one of his final images looks like on his computer. Abelardo came out from Boston to demonstrate his portable camera obscura in a tent, which he will later set up inside the brick barracks during the International Orange exhibition that will take over Fort Point National Historic Site as part of the 75th anniversary celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge. This demonstration took place in San Francisco, California on Friday, April 13, 2012.

The image of the bridge gets to the ground through a periscope that pops out the roof of the tent. A prism redirects the image at a 90-degree angle, and the light that hits the flat surface is what Morell photographs from inside the darkened space.

He calls it his "tent camera" and to make one picture can take three hours of preparation if the wind doesn't blow it all away.

Old-fashioned idea

"It's really an old-fashioned idea of using light projected in a camera obscura way," says Morell, who came out from his suburban Boston studio on a blustery weekend in April. His mission was to make three oversize prints to enhance his installation "Vertigo," which involves a working camera obscura set up inside Fort Point.

The location he has chosen for his shoot is above the fort at East Battery. He arrives directly from the airport as the western winds are still clearing the skies of a thunderstorm. The tent is a white geodesic dome with black lining that keeps it dark inside. To give the image depth and mystery Morell scatters rocks and debris on the tent floor.

"The effect is kind of a naturally made surrealism," he says.

A challenge

Using a digital camera on a tripod, his exposure time is a few minutes in which he needs everything to remain perfectly still. This is a challenge with the gusts shaking everything inside the tent, blurring the image.

His first report to the crew gathered outside is "not so good. The wind is killing us."

Morell, 63, does not mind a little danger. His family fled Cuba in 1962, right after his father was arrested in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. "My father thought we were all going to be killed, so we had to escape," says Morell, who was 14 at the time. "I thought it was fun. It was kind of like a Hitchcock adventure."

They made it to Miami, and Morell worked his way up the Eastern Seaboard to Bowdoin College in Maine. He's been working in various forms of the camera obscura for 25 years now, and his images have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in both New York and San Francisco.

The camera obscura that he will set up at two windows inside the brick fortress won't have the hazards of the tent camera.

Into sharp focus

Before he does, the wind dies down long enough to bring the south tower into focus, as sharp on the floor of this darkened tent as it would be standing outside looking at the tower itself.

The image is captured and transferred onto his laptop. Satisfied, Morell, takes his camera down and here comes the gale that the lull has been building toward. It lifts up his tent and periscope and carries it over the parking lot into the trees.

"It was just short of falling into the bay, which would have stopped the project," he says afterward.